One Phone or Two?

Written by Riley | Business Technology | Solopreneurs

​Are you a solopreneur? How many phones do you have?

Many self employed business people have two phones, one for business use and one for personal use. There are many reasons for doing this, but one of them is for accounting purposes. It's a lot easier to calculate your expenses (business telephone calls) when you have a dedicated business phone number. Otherwise, you'd have to trawl through your personal phone bill with a highlighter and identify each call and text that was made for your business and add up the associated costs.

​However, carrying two phones is cumbersome. I did this for a number of years until very recently. I had my personal phone with all of my personal apps and social media accounts, and then my business phone with all of my business apps and social media accounts. Although I found it a chore, I thought it was necessary. But not anymore!
 
If you're a solopreneur and you want to go from two phones to just one, here's how I did it.

​1) Get a Dual-SIM Phone

​​This is the most important step. A dual-SIM phone will allow you to use two different numbers from one handset. Two numbers means two phone bills, so you can still account for the whole of the business phone bill as an expense. And it's a lot easier to use than it sounds. Each time you make a call or send a text, your phone will ask you number you want to do it from. Simple

​2) Get a Phone With Large Storage

​If you have a lot of apps that you use for business, a phone with large storage will allow you to install these alongside your personal apps without having to worry about running out of space.

​3) Consolidate Social Accounts

​​This step can be tricky.
 
Some social apps, like Twitter and Instagram, allow you to set up multiple accounts. This is great if you have separate accounts for personal and business use. But not all apps allow this. Facebook is one of them. I use Facebook for business and personal things but I only have one account. I separate the two functions by using Facebook's “List” feature. This allows you to add your friends to different lists. When sharing a post, you can then choose to share it to a particular list and only people on that list will see it. So if you're sharing something personal, you can easily hide it from your business contacts by not sharing it to your business list.

​Alternatively, you can restrict all business activities to your Facebook page and manage it from the Pages app.

​4) Install Disa (For 2 WhatsApp Accounts)

​I use WhatsApp a lot on both of my numbers but the app doesn't allow multiple accounts on one device, dual-SIM phone or not. This was the biggest hurdle for me to overcome in going from two phones to one, until I discovered an app called “Disa”.
 
Disa is a unified messaging hub and allows you to aggregate your various instant messaging accounts into one place. I prefer not to use it in this way, but what I have done is added my business WhatsApp account to it and then use the official WhatsApp app for my personal number, so I now have two WhatsApp accounts on one phone.
 
The app itself is fantastic! It has a nice, clean interface and is easy to set up and use. It doesn't have all the features of the official WhatsApp app but the trade-off is well worth it.

​To Summarise

• Get a dual-SIM phone
  
• Get a phone with large storage
  
• Consolidate social accounts
  
• Install Disa (for two WhatsApp accounts)

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